1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to Internet access optimization, and, more particularly, to the dynamic and speedy processing and display of Internet web pages on portable web access devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
The growth in computer information technology has spurred the creation of numerous ways to connect with the Internet. The growth in modern day communication technology has given individuals as well as companies and their employees powerful communication tools. These communication tools range from modern telephone systems that provide sophisticated cellular telephones having Internet access capabilities, wireless Internet e-mail accounts by way of portable computers, text pagers, etc. In addition, advanced devices such as personal digital assistants (PDA's) or palm top computers can use wireless communications to connect with the Internet to provide mobile utilization of the Internet. Although these technologies have provided busy business users as well as ordinary persons with affordable avenues for always having access to information and data from around the world, these technologies also necessarily introduce a level of complication.
For instance, small devices such as PDA's and wireless phones typically do not have high processor speeds to handle complex HTML table layouts as is typically utilized on many Internet web pages. When PDA's are connected to the Internet and attempt to download web pages, the HTML contents are too complex for the low speed processor of a PDA to handle so a user typically has to wait a very long time to see anything on a screen of the PDA. This long wait can be a frustrating experience for the user and oftentimes dissuades the user from connecting to the Internet when using low processing speed devices. This frustration is also seen with users of old personal computers with low speed processors. Although access to the Internet and data transfer speeds may increase, unless the data may be processed in a manner enabling a user of the Internet to have a positive experience, users may just give up and wait to access the Internet on a PC with a high speed processor.
Alternatively, because of the low processing speed of PDA's, compromises have been made regarding web browsing software for PDA's which allows faster access to web pages but does not enable full graphics as is typically seen on full-sized computer systems. For example, such systems may only show text with simplified graphics. Unfortunately, these problems are major drawbacks for most people who would like to use lightweight devices but still want rich Internet content with full versions of the web pages.
FIG. 1 shows a system 10 illustrating Internet access by portable devices through use of a wireless connection. In this example, an Internet Service Provider (ISP) 12 can provide data from the Internet to a personal computer (PC) 14, a personal digital assistant (PDA) 16, and a wireless phone 18. When the PC 14 receives complex hypertext markup language (HTML) data, because it has a powerful enough central processing unit (CPU) to properly process and display graphics associated with Internet web pages, it can typically display web pages for a user in a quick and prompt manner. In other circumstances, a user may attempt to access a Web page with the PDA 16 or the wireless phone 18 via the wireless connection with the ISP 12. Unfortunately, the PDA 16 and the wireless phone 18 typically have far less processing speed than the CPU of the PC 14. Because the PDA 16 and the phone 18 do not have enough processing speed to properly and in a timely manner display the web pages, the display process is extremely slow and at times may freeze so there is no display. Therefore, far too often, the PDA 16 and the wireless phone 18 cannot properly process data required to display Internet web pages. Such occurrences may frustrate users of such systems and relegate low processing speed environments to usage of low graphics web pages or lead to avoidance of all web surfing while within the low processing environments.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for a method which can operate in a low processing speed environment to intelligently and powerfully process Internet data to display Internet web pages in a user friendly manner.